This invention relates in general to surface inspection systems, and in particular, to a high speed scanner system for inspecting anamolies on surfaces such as semiconductor wafers, photomasks, reticles, ceramic tiles, and other surfaces.
The size of semiconductor devices fabricated on silicon wafers has been continually reduced. At the time this application is filed, for example, semiconductor devices can be fabricated at a resolution of a half micron or less and sixty-four (64) megabyte DRAMS are being fabricated with 0.35 micron design rule. The shrinking of semiconductor devices to smaller and smaller sizes has imposed a much more stringent requirement for sensitivity of wafer inspection instruments which are called upon to detect contaminant particles and pattern defects that are small compared to the size of the semiconductor devices. On the other hand, it is desirable for wafer inspection systems to provide an adequate throughput so that these systems can be used in production runs to detect defective wafers.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,471 to Stonestrom et al. assigned to the present assignee of this application, the area illuminated on a wafer surface by a scanning beam is an ellipse which moves in the scan direction. In one example given by Stonestrom et al., the ellipse has a width of 20 microns and a length of 115 microns. Light scattered by anamolies or patterns in such illuminated area is detected by photodetectors placed at azimuthal angles in the range of 80 to 100°. The signals detected by the photodetectors are used to construct templates. When the elliptical spot is moved in the scan direction to a neighboring position, scattered light from structures within the spot is again detected and the photodetector signal is then compared to the template to ascertain the presence of contaminant particles or pattern defects as opposed to regular pattern. In Stonestrom et al., the scanning beam scans across the entire wafer to illuminate and inspect a long narrow strip of the wafer extending across the entire dimension of the wafer in the scanning direction. The wafer is then moved by a mechanical stage in a direction perpendicular to the scanning direction for scanning a neighboring elongated strip. This operation is then repeated until the entire wafer is covered.
While the system of Stonestrom et al. performs well for inspecting wafers having semiconductor devices that are fabricated with coarser resolution, with the continual shrinking of the size of the devices fabricated, it is now desirable to provide an improved inspection tool that can be used to detect very small size anamolies that may be difficult to detect using Stonestrom et al.'s system.